I am a little confused over the imperfect and the first aorist tense. The example in the white book for imperfect is 'I loosed' (I can see how 'I was loosing' suggests continuance) ,this is the same as the example for aorist 'I loosed'. How would you distinguish between the two, i can see the greek spelling is different but how would you distinguish it within an english sentance? just for reference! I didn't learn tenses at school....

if anyone could give an example sentance that would be really helpful!

The translations White gives are; I was loosing, I loosed.
I was loosing gives expression to the imperfective aspect (continuance).
At times when translating, this gives a stilted English sentence. Then it might be better to go for I loosed.
The aorist does not say what type of action it was. It just says that it occurred (usually past time), so if you translate it as I was loosing, you are saying more than the Greek tells you. (Unless context suggests it.)

In ancient Greek the imperfect express a durative action, it lasts some time. On the other hand, the aorist expresses a punctual or momentaneous action. In English sometimes it's not easy to tranlate the imperfect, because the past tense usually reflects more the idea of the aorist. For the imperfect you have to use the past continuous "I was sleeping" or expressions that express this durativeness "I used to study"... For the aorist the past usually is a correct translation "I studied".

antianira wrote:I'm having problems with this as well....But what does "I loose; I was loosing" mean? I've never hear 'loose' used as a verb, unless it is supposed to be lose, or loosen.

[face=SPIonic]lu/w[/face] is used as the example verb because it has such a nice short and easily recognizable stem. That makes it easy to see the augments and endings. The tranlation of it seems a little silly though.
Loose means undo, as in I untie my shoe.
It can also mean destroy.
As the translation in the paradigms untie would sound better than loose.

Whenever I look at the [face=SPIonic]lu/w[/face] paradigms, I think of some ancient commander, right before an attack, shouting, "At my command, loose hell!" or of the commands of the catapulta and archery captains, "Loose!"